My Life as a Cartoonist (23 page)

We sit on one of the benches and imitate a woman on the other side of the park talking to her collie. Carly and I laugh hysterically as we try to duplicate the woman's thick Scottish accent.

Mr. Danson is there with his greyhound, but poor Bodi can barely keep up with Murphy today. He chases the dog for a lap, then settles under the bench I'm sitting on.

Carly is vibrant at dinner, telling my parents about her mom's landscaping business and a pesky mole that's been terrorizing one of her mom's clients. I have to concentrate to keep my manners in check; Carly waits patiently to swallow before she talks and puts her fork down between bites. It's almost as if she actually listened when her parents were trying to teach her dining etiquette.

Even when Carly was little, I doubt she was the kind of girl who'd want to dress Frank up in doll clothes or have a monkey tea party, so I'm not surprised when what she wants to do after dinner is help me get Frank ready for monkey college. I let her watch a segment from the training DVD before we take Frank out of his cage.

I demonstrate how Frank can now open a DVD case on his own. Like the trainers on the video, I reward Frank with lots of praise when he accomplishes the task.

“Let's teach him how to pick up something that's been dropped,” Carly says. “Like a remote.”

For the next hour, we take turns sitting on one of the kitchen chairs dropping the TV remote, coaxing Frank to pick it up. A few times the batteries fall out when the remote hits the floor, and it doesn't seem as if Frank and Bodi appreciate the noise. We move Operation Teach Frank into the den to safeguard the remote and Bodi's sanity. Carly asks me for paper and keeps meticulous notes of our results—something I've never done in all the training I've conducted. It's just one more reason why Carly's the smartest kid I know.

On the forty-third drop, Frank tentatively picks up the remote from the rug and hands it back to me. Carly and I rejoice at this new step in Frank's education, praising him as if he's just won a gold medal.

As Carly and I have a celebratory snack of pears and lemonade, I can't help but remember when Matt and I had a big fight earlier this year. Carly came over to take my mind off the fact that I was at war with my best friend. Her friendship really helped. Based on how much fun we had today, I hope my reciprocal effort works for her, too.

“This was great,” she says when her mom comes to pick her up. “Can I help you train Frank again?”

I tell her of course. For most of the time we were together, neither of us mentioned Crash or Umberto. That's probably why we had so much fun. Sometimes sticking your head in the sand isn't a bad thing after all.

I Give My Brain a Rest

Saturday, I try not to fixate on detention and invite Matt over to help me rummage through the garage for Old Stuff We Forgot About That We Can Still Play With. In fact, our garage is so full of that kind of junk, we've never been able to park a car there.

Because my mom's having lunch with one of her friends and my dad's on deadline, no one stops us when Matt and I carry Frank's cage out to the garage. I bring Bodi's dog bed so he can join us too.

“You better finish that cartoon with Umberto. Two weeks' detention would be unbearable.” Matt holds up a broken weed wacker we could still take apart and build something with.

“Don't worry—I'll finish that cartoon if I have to do the whole thing myself.”

“I guess that wouldn't be much of a collaboration.”

I can barely hear him since Matt is wearing the huge rubber Frankenstein mask my father used to wear on Halloween when I was little.

“Why does my mom keep all this stuff?” I point to the tower of cardboard boxes in the corner of the garage.

“We can make another robot,” Matt suggests.

“The last time we got silver paint all over my dad's bike, remember?”

“It totally blended in. I can't believe he noticed,” Matt says.

I hold up a sturdy box that had probably held a pair of my father's shoes. “Or we could put on one of our legendary magic shows.”

Matt drops the hose. “Should we bring back the Great Mattini?”

“And the Amazing Derek?”